New Releases by David Lawrence

Taking the culturally resonant motif of the descent to the underworld as his guiding thread, David L. Pike traces the interplay between myth and history in medieval and modernist literature. Passage through Hell suggests new approaches to the practice of comparative literature, and a possible escape from the current morass of competing critical schools and ideologies. Pike''s readings of Louis Ferdinand Céline and Walter Benjamin reveal the tensions at work in the modern appropriation of structures derived from ancient and medieval descents. His book shows how these structures were redefined in modernism and persist in contemporary critical practice. In order to recover the historical corpus of modernism, he asserts, it is necessary to acknowledge the attraction that medieval forms and motifs held for modernist literature and theory. By pairing the writings of the postwar German dramatist and novelist Peter Weiss with Dante''s Commedia, and Christine de Pizan with Virginia Woolf, Pike argues for a new level of complexity in the relation between medieval and modern poetics. Pike''s supple and persuasive reading of the Commedia resituates that text within the contradictions of medieval tradition. He contends that the Dantean allegory of conversion, altered to suit the exigencies of modernism, maintains its hold over current literature and theory. The postwar writers Pike treats--Weiss, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott--exemplify alternate strategies for negotiating the legacy of modernism. The passage through hell emerges as a way of disentangling images of the past from their interpretation in the present.

Wide-ranging and authoritative, this book explores Christianity as it has taken root in societies across five continents.

Former Harley Street consultant David Pedersen shows how hypnosis can be used as an alternative to drug therapy in a wide range of patients. Cameral Analysis shows how the neurophysiological division of the brain into two separate hemispheres may account for the symptoms of psychoneurotic behaviour. Using hypnosis, the two halves of the brain can be made to function as a whole once more, curing these distressing symptoms without the side effects of costly drug therapies.

The 1977 Clean Air Act legally mandated the prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) of air quality related values (AQRVs) on wilderness lands. Federal land managers are assigned the task of protecting these wilderness values. This report contains guidelines for determining the potential effects of incremental increases in air pollutants on natural resources in wilderness areas of the National Forests of California. These guidelines are based on current information about the effects of ozone, sulfur, and nitrogen on AQRVs. Knowledge-based methods were used to elicit these guidelines from scientists and resource managers in a workshop setting. Linkages were made between air pollutant deposition and level of deterioration of specific features (sensitive receptors) of AQRVs known to be sensitive to pollutants. Terrestrial AQRVs include a wide number of ecosystem types as well as geological and cultural values. Ozone is already high enough to injure conifers in large areas of California and is a major threat to terrestrial AQRVs. Aquatic AQRVs include lakes and streams, mostly in high elevation locations. Current sulfur and nitrogen deposition is probably too low to warrant immediate concern in most areas (with the exception of nitrogen deposition at some locations in southern California), although the low buffer capacity of many aquatic systems in California makes them sensitive to potential future increases in acidity. Visibility is considered as a discrete AQRV. Guidelines are presented for determining degradation of visibility based on sensitive views in wilderness areas. Estimates of current deposition of ozone, sulfur, and nitrogen are compiled for all California wilderness areas. Recommendations are included for resource monitoring, data collection, and decision criteria with respect to the disposition of permit applications.

Depletion of fisheries due to acid rain may pose a future threat to bald eagle and osprey populations in some regions. Loss of essential habitat has affected declines in the caracara and western burrowing owl and the disappearance of the norther aplomado falcon from the southern United States. Most populations of the ferruginous hawk, marsh hawk, and prairie falcon appear stable; habitat loss is the most critical factor in population changes.

Additional title page description: Some Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous ammonites date the Buchia zones and furnish correlations with the Boreal and Tethyan Realms.

A description of the lithology and paleontology of three units of formational rank in the upper Chitina Valley region of Alaska.